Waiting for Lefty: The Inside Story of a Play

These are reminiscences of how a play called Waiting for Lefty (by Clifford Odets) was staged by a band of wannabe stage actors at IIMB, circa 1983. I was one of them. Directed by Harish Chaudhary.

1. You should have seen the first day’s audition. It was hilarious, with voices reading the dialogues out in a flat monotone. I’m sure not a single one of us understood what was going on-if anyone did, he "done himself" full credit. Now that it’s all culminated fairly successfully, I think it’s only in the fitness of things that the inside story, the SCOOP, must come out. About what happened while we worked at it- it was all WORK, and for a PLAY.
2. There was this old disease-malignant, tumescent (sorry, Doc Barnes- a character from the play)- of non-attendance. We never really found an anti-toxin for it till the end. One does understand if you bunk classes, but a play rehearsal? What’s the world coming to? Of course, those of us who came gulped down chai and paushtik bondas at Uncle’s.
3.  The fight for the good voice: There were a few voices in the script- a voice, another voice, and a good voice. Now, everyone wanted to be the GOOD voice. We never reached a consensus on the issue (HR guys please note). Finally, the diro (Harish Chaudhary) pulled a fast one by mouthing it himself. The really good voice, Banny, withdrew due to commitments (academic? Not sure).
4. If one man could play two roles, Nandu Jr. would have been the Gunman- “Sit down, punk!” was written by Odets with him in mind. But Banny had to be replaced by someone equally good, and Jr. filled the breach admirably. Luckily for us, Chakki was lurking in the shadows, and could be hauled up for this role fast.
5. The comedy: I haven’t laughed as heartily ever before or since-

1.       Dash saying “But Fatt is right, our officers is right” with a nasal twang-the first time he did it, we all rolled over in our chairs.

2.       Dilip Gadkari jumping all over the place trying to sound convincing with “Boys, they just found Lefty.” Instead of looking shocked, we hit the ceiling laughing.

            The relatively smaller travails we endured were-

-          Getting Ali and Navneeta to step on the floor instead of stepping on each other’s toes during the dance sequence.

-          Getting Yours Truly to emote- my inexperience in the area showed, and with Rose (my heroine) looking as if she meant every word of what she said, the only emotion I registered was FEAR.

-          Getting Sunil (Kandlikar) to look less like a gangster and more like a brother (here we succeeded).

-          Getting Robin to stop laughing. He just sat there and laughed. Finally, we had to stuff his mouth with accurately aimed chalk pieces.

-          Getting Corporate Man (Manglik) to bend (in lieu of a fall) when Sarat punched him. I’m sure I noticed a 5 degree deviation from the vertical once in rehearsals.

-          Getting Sivaram to look less less frightened of old Doc Barnes (ROI).

Just one more point. The censorship. The original script contained a couple of kisses. But we decided that you dirty old guys didn’t deserve the vicarious pleasure. Feel cheated? Well, bad luck.

(this first appeared on our wall mag. I had preserved the original)